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Monday, June 3, 2013

What IS That? #4

Well hello again, all I have for you tonight is a simple post to celebrate setting up my new baseball card table. It seems I had stopped off at my friendly local source of baseball cards, a famous certain-letter-Mart, and folding tables were on sale, just in time for graduation.

And mostly still stuck working seemingly 24/7. I love this time of year a lot; for three more weeks the day gets a tiny bit longer each day. And I usually work till dark every day. So there is a tiny bit less time to blog about baseball cards each day. Especially when you have car-less employees working on the road with you who request a ride to the grocery store to feed themselves and they emerge with 2 bananas and a bag of potato chips. But I am finally working from home, the employees are done for the season, and I can finish the last few time-sensitive jobs in peace, and hopefully with a few blog posts in the evening. Series Two is just around the corner...

...so I need to get in gear with my observations from Series One.

Like this Starling Marte card here.

I do wonder how many people call him "Sterling" since he is becoming a sterling outfielder for the Pirates.

And I love the lines on this card, something I will babble on about soon, at too much length as usual probably. Diagonal lines are more powerful, my research tells me; this card has that, though that theory isn't that thoroughly difficult to put in play with baseball player images. And the lines inevitably lead the viewer to my question about this card.

What IS that in his back pocket there?

A playbook? Wait, wrong sport.

Suntan lotion? Not sure he needs that.

Gideons? No, no, I'm sure he is nice enough to leave that in the hotel room. And this shot is from a home game.

A 1990s cell phone? Surely there is a rule about texting while playing. You just know this has come up in a Little League game somewhere. But wait, 1990s cell phones couldn't text. Those were the days.

His little black book? Guys don't need those anymore, that's what cell phones are for. Except everyone knows that, and if female A picks up the phone to find female B's # there....maybe the little black book wasn't such a bad idea. And wouldn't a Playa need the little black book a little more at an away game? Shannon Sharpe used to taunt opposing players by yelling out their female acquaintance's cell phone numbers. Maybe I'm onto something here....taunting in baseball is solved easily when the taunter has to appear at the plate the next time - Marte was hit by a pitch twice today. Extra padding for a beanball game?

Running gloves? I learned a lot about running gloves just now. We didn't use running gloves playing perpetual Home Run Derby in the backyard, which is the most I ever got to play baseball. But out on the bases, they are a smart thing to have with you.

But whatever it is doesn't seem to bother Starling here, as he generally bats lead-off and is tied for 2nd in the NL for steals this year. In the year of the Strikeouts, everyone talks about the waxing and waning of pitching and hitting in the game. I always wonder, why did Stolen Bases peak in the 1980s? At least of the decades of the "modern era"? Would the "live ball" era make any difference? But I am one too many mornings and a thousand cards behind to wander websites any more tonight.

All I know is, I didn't want anything in my back pocket when the baseball inevitably broke something over at a neighbor's house and we all had to take off running.